“I don’t want to see any psychiatrist who takes pictures of snails,” Simon said.
“Dr. Trobe agreed to see you. He’s coming over tonight.”
“Cancel him.”
“Nobody is saying you’re crazy. Just that you need help to get back in step. There’s no shame in this. I wouldn’t go broadcasting it around the neighborhood but seeing a qualified professional for some counseling is a sensible way to go. Some of the most successful people . . .”
“I have nothing to talk about.”
“For once in your life, just listen. And don’t hurry to blame your mother or Rowena or me for your hang-ups. If you wanted to take driving lessons you should have said so. It’s not our fault that you steal cars. You had every advantage.”
“That car incident happened ages ago,” Simon said. “And there’s more to the story than meets the eye. I never stole . . .”
“I didn’t mean to bring it up,” Robert J. said. “Let bygones be bygones.”
“Is anything ever forgotten or forgiven?” Simon said.
Dr. Herbert Trobe found Simon sitting on his bed wearing only a Jerry Garcia T-shirt and boxer shorts. “What’s this?” the psychiatrist said, “A juvenile declaration of war or are you making a fashion statement? Well, two can play at that game.” Trobe stripped off his shoes, jacket, shirt and pants, folded them neatly, and flopped his corpulent body into a rocking chair where he sat swaying like a metronome.
“I hear you’re giving your dad a hard time because you feel misunderstood and neglected or is it overprotected? I forget,” Dr. Trobe said. “There are some things you should understand. The older one gets, the closer to death, the harder it is to take young complaints seriously. They begin to seem trivial in the face of one’s own downhill slide toward eternity. You have to be there to know what I’m talking about. Robert J. Apple is a man of middle age, dancing through a psychological minefield. With the further burden of satisfying a young wife. He has plenty to think about besides you. Then there’s the inevitable dimension of father-son envy I call the flip side of the Oedipus complex. You’re driven by a subconscious urge to kill pop and penetrate mom, that’s common knowledge. Well, Mr. Oedipus, your father is entitled to his own unconscious drive to stuff you into the disposal and screw your best girl.”
“I had a friend who called me Oedipus when he meant motherfucker,” Simon said. “I think it was a term of endearment. I know the theory but I can’t say my subconscious ever thought much about having sex with my mother. I’m not even sure what she looks like.”
Dr. Trobe smoothed down what was left of his hair and scratched at his skimpy beard. “I am a highly respected practitioner, the author of six acclaimed books and protected by tenure. I’ve been given a sketchy outline of your miserable history as a victim of side effects I suspect to be manifestations more psychologically than pharmacologically induced. Whatever the source of your problems, it’s difficult for me to either empathize or sympathize with your turgid behavior—your so-called depression and appalling display of self-pity. In short, it’s hard for me to like you. However, I am willing to make the attempt to help you for a vastly reduced fee if you’ll agree to meet me halfway.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Simon said. “Where do we start?”
“I’m more Stanislavsky than Freud,” Dr. Trobe said. Like the Actor’s Studio. Let me reach into my own bag of formative experiences, the kind that make you wince for the rest of your life whenever they come to mind. I did my undergraduate work at an Ivy League university in Massachusetts, a state located just under the Arctic Circle. Winters were so fucking cold up there—the prevailing conceit being that the lower the temperature the higher the academic level—that for the first time I began listening to weather reports and searching for buds like a rabid insect. My fellow students adapted to eternal winter by behaving like lunatics. They learned to ski. They climbed frozen mountains, chipping at blocks of ice. They went fishing through donut holes cut into lakebeds. Their crowning glory was to mount a carnival celebrating December’s frigid solstice. Members of fraternities and sororities, already bored with the incestuous intramural fornication that supplemented a pathetic heating system, devoted the remnants of their light-deprived energy to building huge statues of snow. Those graven images were colored with vibrant dyes extracted from large pots of boiled vegetables.
“Each year’s Carnival had its theme. In the particular solstice that haunts me, the theme was Fairy Land. Each refrigerated sculpture was of a character familiar from the works of Anderson, Grimm and Disney. At night the statues were lit with floodlights of the kind used outside the theater where the Academy Awards are presented or at the opening of a new supermarket. Most of those statues would have been improved by an early thaw but one, a monolithic Snow White, was gorgeous. Chalk it up to my crystallized brain waves, but I was captivated by Miss White, utterly enchanted by her polar perfection. On a night for the record books—it must have been thirty below zero—I left my dormitory, drawn by some powerful magnet, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. I found a stepladder and carried it out to where Snow White stood regally between the shoemaker with the elves and Cinderella’s extended family. I dropped my robe, climbed the ladder naked, embraced that slut of disinterested sherbet and kissed her ruby lips. We stuck together. I couldn’t even scream for help because our mouths were glued tight. They wouldn’t have found me until spring break if it wasn’t for an alert watchman.
Snow White and I had to be transported as a unit to the infirmary and melted apart with buckets of hot water. So, when I heard about your automotive entanglement, I offered my services to your parents.” Dr. Trobe genuflected as if he were a priest. “A bit of body language,” Trobe said, “to underline my feeling that I’m here out of compassion, empathy, nothing materialistic.”
“Like money?” Simon said.
“The statement was rhetorical. It didn’t require a snotty comment. Getting back to my little tale of horror, it took me months to shake off the humiliation of that conjuncture. I was trapped in lingering depression and, like you, Simon, refused to leave my room. Then, the evening before I was scheduled to be plugged into a shock treatment dynamo, out of the blue came liberating insight. I realized that I had every right and reason to be depressed. If I’d been anything less than depressed I would have deserved two lobotomies.” Dr. Trobe let out a laugh. Simon actually laughed along with him. “I endured six years of intensive psychoanalysis with a traditional Freudian who kept insisting that I’d somehow confused Snow White with Mamie Eisenhower. He’d met my mother and, like you, ruled out any hidden lusting in that direction. It took an eternity to free me from the bondage of inner fantasies and outer indignities. Fortunately for you, Simon, our profession has entered a new age. Are you aware of psychotropic medications? Decades of couch time are about to be replaced by a few easy-to-swallow tablets and by a stroke of luck I’ve been chosen to experiment with a new example of those marvels, far beyond Miltown or Librium. It’s called Xanelul. I’m leaving you a month’s supply. I think one pill three times a day for four weeks should eliminate any chemical imbalance resulting from life’s thuggeries crunching your cortex. Take these tablets seriously and take them on time. Let me know when you feel improved. Or sicker, though there have been no instances of any so-called side effects attributable to Xanelul. The doctor produced a small bottle of cerulean blue tablets that could have been mistaken for jewels in the window of Logan’s Lapidary on Main Street.
“I want you to know, Simon, that while I may be contemptuous of a coddled complainer like yourself, I do take your discomfort seriously even though it pains me to think of all the warm young pussy waiting to welcome you back to the world while my horizons shrink with every tick of the clock. At least I have a good wife, passable children, my work, enough reason to avoid taking the gas pipe.” Dr. Trobe got back into his clothes. “It’s been nice talking to you, Simon. Many of my patients are much less forthcoming.”
That evening for the f
irst time since he left Glenda Memorial, Simon Apple came downstairs for dinner. He wore the same outfit he’d worn on his date with Miss Ulman, except for the ruined pants. When Robert J. asked what he and Dr. Trobe had talked about Simon said it was privileged communication.
Before dinner, he swallowed a capsule of Xanelul and found himself laughing at the Evening News though Peter Jennings reported on a chilling crisis allegedly caused by a flock of migrating cranes NORAD had nearly mistaken for Soviet missiles.
Xanelul
Trade name: Harpacinimon
Bliss of mind from Regis Pharmaceuticals
“What’s funny about nuclear warheads?” Rowena said. “The joke eludes me.”
“It’s the whole idea that birds still migrate,” Simon said. “In this day and age.”
Three weeks later, when Dr. Trobe called to ask about Simon, Robert J. reported an amazing change. “He’s upstairs now filling out college applications,” Robert J. said. “He seems hopeful, involved, optimistic. He acts like a normal happy young man. Though sometimes my wife and I are puzzled by his unprovoked outbursts of laughter.”
“I’m faxing you a refill for the medication I gave him. It’s expensive but well worth the price.”
“Medication?”
“Xanelul. An energizing tranquilizer. Didn’t he mention the samples I left?”
“He must have,” Robert J. said. “These days my mind is a sieve.”
“Keep him on the same dosage. And I would like him to check in every few months. I’m part of a major study on the drug. So far Xanelul seems to be remarkably tolerated except for a chronic itch and severe abdominal pain in a very small percentage of users. It could be a life-changing discovery.”
“It’s amazing what they’re coming up with,” Robert J. said.
“The irony is, Xanelul was originally developed in Europe as an additive to cattle and poultry feed. It was only by sheerest chance that a schizophrenic shepherd ingested a quantity and ended up cured. Some half-assed chemist in Manchester came up with the formula. Now he’s making millions. In fact, his pipsqueak company was just acquired by Regis Pharmaceuticals. That’s a huge conglomerate. I’m doing a study for them.”
“I’m familiar with Regis,” Robert J. said. “Do you name your patients?”
“I do include names and basic data on my subjects. If you’re concerned about Simon’s right to privacy, rest assured that the information is kept confidential. It won’t be made available to any third party like an insurance company or employer. Certain government agencies and the World Health Organization might be exceptions but I can’t see how that would generate anxiety. No reason for apprehension. Let’s not dabble in paranoia, Mr. Apple.”
44
“I didn’t feel anything,” Regis Van Clay said, yawning. “Unstrap me from this board.”
“I don’t understand,” Belladonna said. “Fish hooks in the scrotum attached by piano wire to those remote-controlled toy trucks used to cause you quintessential anguish. Now you’re dozing off?” She unbuckled the leather bands holding him in place.
“Try something else. Roll the pineapple over my belly,” Regis said, sitting up on the wooden plank.
“That pineapple’s spurs are already blunted. What about a tongue in the toaster?”
“Would it be any more effective than toes in the microwave?”
“Everything I say is wrong,” Belladonna said. “Maybe I’m having a bad day. Maybe it’s you. Do you want to get into the electric eel’s tank?”
“That lousy eel’s discharge couldn’t turn on a nightlight in the nursery,” Regis said. “I told you last week to get a new eel.”
“You are so cantankerous,” Belladonna said. “You’re like a different person.”
“I came for relief, not criticism. There’s a scream bottled inside me. I’ve got to get rid of it. Hurt me. Earn your money.”
“You’ve put yourself in a bad place for no reason,” Belladonna said. “Just because some half-assed shrink in Massachusetts wrote a prescription for your precious Xanelul to the Apple grub doesn’t guarantee catastrophe. Nothing’s happened so far. You said the little incubus had enrolled at some quiet college in St. Paul. Don’t make a federal case out of this. It compromises my talent when you make yourself suffer.”
“We sent out a moratorium on using any Regis product for Simon Apple including cold pills. That damn shrink don’t read his mail.”
“What’s done is done.”
“I need you to lay out a worst case scenario. Tell me about how Xanelul will turn Simon Apple to equal parts werewolf and idiot savant. Tell me how that idiot lawyer Klipstein will relish his day in court, how the jury will find me liable in a unanimous verdict, how my stock will plummet when the FDA forces me to print a skull and crossbones on every Xanelul capsule. Explain how it will tumble down a black hole like Expeloton. Spare no details. I need to develop immunities.”
“I’m not very verbal,” Belladonna said.
“It doesn’t matter. You couldn’t rattle my confidence because when it comes to Xanelul we’re happy in our castle, surrounded by a moat filled with boiling bilge. Based on projections following the FDA’s green light—you have to understand that the Office of New Drugs and the Office of Drug Safety are safely in my corner and we’re already into a positive Figure Study—Xanelul promises to account for 32 percent of our earnings and we expect the figure to easily triple within five years. Is four dollars a dose excessive? Not if millions are crazy enough to pay for a semblance of sanity in this cockamamie era. And do they care if a pill costs me four-point-three cents to make out of Irish cow flop? It would have been three-point-five cents if I didn’t personally insist on the classy purple coloring and the rainbow-shaped dispenser.” Regis swallowed a phantom pill in pantomime then grinned like Howdy Doody. “Who cares if we mix the junk in slightly rusty oil drums? Is it my fault we get a tax break for moving our factory to Puerto Rico? What was I supposed to do about some stupid rumors? So what if some shit collecting two-leaf clover says a few of our cattle went bananas in Ireland? Who’ll swallow that dribble? Hell, those people believe in leprechauns.”
“You’re apologizing for yourself, Regis,” Belladonna said. “You’re more conflicted than usual. When you come here you should know what a rat’s clit you are, no ifs, ands or buts. Why don’t you go see Trilby Morning? Let Little Miss Fluffy Muff sprinkle glitter on her Mound of Venus and tell you how Regis Van Clay is the second coming and what a shame it is that some undergraduate pimple will topple his empire.”
“No,” Regis said. “I need pain, not praise. Don’t fail me, Belladonna.”
“I could try rubbing jalapeno paste on your foreskin,” Belladonna said.
“What are you running here, a kindergarten?” Regis said.
“Why don’t you just have the sonofabitch killed?” Belladonna said.
“Funny,” Regis said. “That’s what my wife suggested.”
45
With the help of Xanelul aka Harpacinimon and long-distance encouragement from Dr. Herbert Trobe, Simon breezed through his years at sedate Celadon College in St. Paul. He absorbed the lessons of civilizations past and present with relish on his way to a degree in Liberal Arts.
No single subject interested him more than another. He chose to major in Twentieth Century American Literature with a minor in City Planning because he was required to major and minor in something. He found reading fiction the quickest path to learning and approved of the idea of cities, especially their hidden infrastructures, the pipes and wires that allowed urban life to flourish.
His writing talent, first wakened by Tabitha Ulman, matured into long reports scrupulously researched in the library and in an occasional Op Ed piece for the school newspaper, but Simon had no urge to compose anything like a novel or even a poem.
Xanelul left Simon even-tempered, in control, often smiling. He had many friends and no friends. He dealt with people as if he were sniffing flowers in a strange garden. Simon was en
tirely aware of the quakes and rumblings that caused others to march, protesting or endorsing some local or national issue, of shattered romances that knotted the hearts of his dormitory mates, of the fads and fashions that popped up like mushrooms in the fertile ground of young exuberance, but he went his own way, never completely alienated but always willingly apart. Simon remembered that in his early years separation seemed a curse. Now he viewed it as a blessing. What he described as his policy of social solitude was a perfectly suitable path to peace.
Once, an alumnus who’d achieved fame as the host of a daytime television show returned to the Celadon campus as a guest speaker in a symposium on Popular Culture: America’s Greatest Export. During the Q&A that followed his talk, one frisky coed asked him how it felt to be universally recognized here and abroad. The celebrity said he would trade fame and fortune for anonymity. “I wish I had the moxie to have my face deconstructed and rebuilt by a plastic surgeon who specialized in anonymity,” he told her. “Just for argument’s sake, suppose I was in this bar and met this girl. Is there any way I could take her up to my room for a glass of wine and a roll on the bearskin rug without tabloid flashbulbs exploding through the window?”
While the audience laughed, Simon sat quietly feeling nothing but sadness for the hypothetical girl and her universally recognized seducer. The experience affirmed his belief in neutrality and confirmed his affection for backup singers on music videos whose names and faces would never be known.
On trips back to Glenda, Robert J. quizzed him about a choice of profession; Rowena asked if he’d met “that someone special.” Simon swung the conversation around to some book or movie, whichever came to mind. Or he talked about the intricacies of sewer systems, waste management and landfill. Simon was expert at using what he’d learned for the practical purpose of straight-arming any potential tackler before he got tangled in the pile.
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